The Family Medici

Author : Mary Hollingsworth
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 528 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2018-03-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9781681777108

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The Family Medici by Mary Hollingsworth Pdf

Having founded the bank that became the most powerful in Europe in the fifteenth century, the Medici gained massive political power in Florence, raising the city to a peak of cultural achievement and becoming its hereditary dukes. Among their number were no fewer than three popes and a powerful and influential queen of France. Their influence brought about an explosion of Florentine art and architecture. Michelangelo, Donatello, Fra Angelico, and Leonardo were among the artists with whom they were socialized and patronized.Thus runs the "accepted view” of the Medici. However, Mary Hollingsworth argues that this is a fiction that has now acquired the status of historical fact. In truth, the Medici were as devious and immoral as the Borgias. In this dynamic new history, Hollingsworth argues that past narratives have focused on a sanitized view of the Medici—wise rulers, enlightened patrons of the arts, and fathers of the Renaissance—and their story was reinvented in the sixteenth century, mythologized by later generations of Medici who used this as a central prop for their legacy.Hollingsworth's revelatory re-telling of the story of the family Medici brings a fresh and exhilarating new perspective to the story behind the most powerful family of the Italian Renaissance.

Author : Tim Parks
Publisher : Profile Books
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2013-08-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9781847656872

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Medici Money by Tim Parks Pdf

The Medici are famous as the rulers of Florence at the high point of the Renaissance. Their power derived from the family bank, and this book tells the fascinating, frequently bloody story of the family and the dramatic development and collapse of their bank (from Cosimo who took it over in 1419 to his grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent who presided over its precipitous decline). The Medici faced two apparently insuperable problems: how did a banker deal with the fact that the Church regarded interest as a sin and had made it illegal? How in a small republic like Florence could he avoid having his wealth taken away by taxation? But the bank became indispensable to the Church. And the family completely subverted Florence's claims to being democratic. They ran the city. Medici Money explores a crucial moment in the passage from the Middle Ages to the Modern world, a moment when our own attitudes to money and morals were being formed. To read this book is to understand how much the Renaissance has to tell us about our own world. Medici Money is one of the launch titles in a new series, Atlas Books, edited by James Atlas. Atlas Books pairs fine writers with stories of the economic forces that have shaped the world, in a new genre - the business book as literature.

Author : Paul Strathern
Publisher : Random House
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2018-02-22
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781448104345

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The Medici by Paul Strathern Pdf

A dazzling piece of Italian history of the infamous family that become one of the most powerful in Europe, weaving its history with Renaissance greats from Leonardo da Vinci to Galileo Against the background of an age which saw the rebirth of ancient and classical learning, The Medici is a remarkably modern story of power, money and ambition. Strathern paints a vivid narrative of the dramatic rise and fall of the Medici family in Florence, as well as the Italian Renaissance which they did so much to sponsor and encourage. Strathern also follows the lives of many of the great Renaissance artists with whom the Medici had dealings, including Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello; as well as scientists like Galileo and Pico della Mirandola; and the fortunes of those members of the Medici family who achieved success away from Florence, including the two Medici popes and Catherine de' Médicis, who became Queen of France and played a major role in that country through three turbulent reigns. ‘A great overview of one family's centuries-long role in changing the face of Europe’ Irish Independent

Author : Mary Hollingsworth
Publisher : Apollo
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2022-06-09
Category : Art
ISBN : 1803281251

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The Medici by Mary Hollingsworth Pdf

'This forensic study of the Renaissance banking dynasty conjures up a world of art, literature, philosophy - and brutality' Telegraph'Likely to become the standard work of reference on the members of the family that dominated Florence' TLS'A lucid and beautifully illustrated family history' The TimesWealthy bankers, wise politicians, patrons of the arts, glittering dukes... so runs the traditional telling of the story of the Medici, the family that ruled Florence for two hundred years and inspired the birth of the Italian Renaissance.In this definitive account of their rise and fall, Mary Hollingsworth argues that the idea that the Medici were wise rulers and enlightened fathers of the Renaissance is a fiction. In truth, she says, the Medici were as devious and immoral as the Borgias - tyrants loathed in the city they illegally made their own and which they beggared in their lust for power.

Author : Catherine Fletcher
Publisher : Random House
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2016-04-21
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781448182084

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The Black Prince of Florence by Catherine Fletcher Pdf

‘A spectacular, elegant, brilliant portrait of skulduggery, murder and sex in Renaissance Florence’ Simon Sebag Montefiore, Evening Standard, Books of the Year 1531 – after years of brutal war and political intrigue, the bastard son of a Medici Duke and a ‘half-negro’ maidservant rides into Florence. Within a year, he rules the city as its Prince. Backed by the Pope and his future father-in-law the Holy Roman Emperor, the nineteen-year-old Alessandro faces down bloody family rivalry and the scheming hostility of Italy’s oligarchs to reassert the Medicis’ faltering grip on the turbulent city-state. Six years later, as he awaits an adulterous liaison, he will be murdered by his cousin in another man’s bed. ‘Nothing in sixteenth-century history is more astonishing’ Hilary Mantel

Author : Cristina Acidini,Cristina Acidini Luchinat,Palazzo Strozzi,Art Institute of Chicago,Palazzo Strozzi (Florence, Italie).,Detroit Institute of Arts,Art institute (Chicago, Ill.).,Marco Chiarini
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 406 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2002-01-01
Category : Art
ISBN : 0300094957

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The Medici, Michelangelo, & the Art of Late Renaissance Florence by Cristina Acidini,Cristina Acidini Luchinat,Palazzo Strozzi,Art Institute of Chicago,Palazzo Strozzi (Florence, Italie).,Detroit Institute of Arts,Art institute (Chicago, Ill.).,Marco Chiarini Pdf

"Publisdhed in conjuntion with the exhibition: Magnificenza! the Medici, Michelangelo, & the Art of Late Renaissance Florence (In Italy, L'Ombra del genio: Michelangelo e l'arte a Firenze, 1538-1631) ..."--Title page verso.

Author : Miles Unger
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 530 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780743254342

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Magnifico by Miles Unger Pdf

Miles Unger's biography of this complex figure draws on primary research in Italian sources and on his intimate knowledge of Florence, where he lived for several years."--BOOK JACKET.

Author : Emma Micheletti
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 100 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Art
ISBN : UVA:X006090881

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The Medici of Florence by Emma Micheletti Pdf

Author : Gabrielle Langdon
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 457 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2006-01-01
Category : Art
ISBN : 9780802038258

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Medici Women by Gabrielle Langdon Pdf

The ducal court of Cosimo I de' Medici in sixteenth-century Florence was one of absolutist, rule-bound order. Portraiture especially served the dynastic pretensions of the absolutist ruler, Duke Cosimo and his consort, Eleonora di Toledo, and was part of a Herculean programme of propaganda to establish legitimacy and prestige for the new sixteenth-century Florentine court. In this engaging and original study, Gabrielle Langdon analyses selected portraits of women by Jacopo Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino, Alessandro Allori, and other masters. She defines their function as works of art, as dynastic declarations, and as encoded documents of court culture and propaganda, illuminating Cosimo's conscious fashioning of his court portraiture in imitation of the great courts of Europe. Langdon explores the use of portraiture as a vehicle to express Medici political policy, such as with Cosimo's Hapsburg and Papal alliances in his bid to be made Grand Duke with hegemony over rival Italian princes. Stories from archives, letters, diaries, chronicles, and secret ambassadorial briefs, open up a world of fascinating, personalities, personal triumphs, human frailty, rumour, intrigue, and appalling tragedies. Lavishly illustrated, Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love and Betrayal in the Court of Duke Cosimo I is an indispensable work for anyone with a passion for Italian renaissance history, art, and court culture.

Author : Natalie R. Tomas
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 246 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2017-07-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9781351885836

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The Medici Women by Natalie R. Tomas Pdf

The Medici Women is a study of the women of the famous Medici family of Florence in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Natalie Tomas examines critically the changing contribution of the women in the Medici family to the eventual success of the Medici regime and their exercise of power within it; and contributes to our historical understanding of how women were able to wield power in late medieval and early modern Italy and Europe. Tomas takes a feminist approach that examines the experience of the Medici women within a critical framework of gender analysis, rather than biography. Using the relationship between gender and power as a vantage point, she analyzes the Medici women's uses of power and influence over time. She also analyzes the varied contemporary reactions to and representation of that power, and the manner in which the women's actions in the political sphere changed over the course of the century between republican and ducal rule (1434-1537). The narrative focuses especially on how women were able to exercise power, the constraints placed upon them, and how their gender intersected with the exercise of power and influence. Keeping the historiography to a minimum and explaining all unfamiliar Italian terms, Tomas makes her narrative clear and accessible to non-specialists; thus The Medici Women appeals to scholars of women's studies across disciplines and geographical boundaries.

Author : Robert Black,John Easton Law
Publisher : Villa I Tatti
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : Arts
ISBN : 0674088441

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The Medici by Robert Black,John Easton Law Pdf

The Medici: Citizens and Masters offers a novel, comparative approach to examining Medici power and influence in Florence. Contributors from diverse perspectives set Medici rule against princely states such as Milan and Ferrara, and they ask how much the Medici changed Florence, contrasting their supremacy with earlier Florentine regimes.

Author : Maria Grazia Pernis,Laurie Adams
Publisher : Peter Lang
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Art
ISBN : 0820476455

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Lucrezia Tornabuoni De' Medici and the Medici Family in the Fifteenth Century by Maria Grazia Pernis,Laurie Adams Pdf

Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici and the Medici Family in the Fifteenth Century is a fresh, new biography of a Renaissance woman who lived during the heyday of Medici power. A remarkable person in her own right, the author of religious poems and sacred narratives, as well as an accomplished businesswoman, Lucrezia was the mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the grandmother of two popes, and the great-great grandmother of Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France. This glimpse of her life and times is a window onto the political intrigues and intellectual achievements of Medici Florence.

Author : Edward Charles
Publisher : Pen and Sword
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2013-06-26
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781473826663

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Inheritance of Power by Edward Charles Pdf

“Takes a novel angle on Cosimo [de Medici]’s rise to power by telling the story of his mistress, the Circassian slave Maddalena . . . an incomparable cast.” —Historical Novel Society Ever-loyal Maddalena, a diminutive, dark-skinned, blue-eyed slave, has borne Cosimo de Medici a son and seen him rise to a position in the Church. Now, late in life, she finds herself committed to a convent, as part of a scheme to prevent Cosimo’s sons from sending the Medici bank into ruin by hiding a fortune in gold for Cosimo’s grandson, Lorenzo, to inherit. But as the months go by, and the gold does not appear, her faith in Cosimo begins to wane and with it, her confidence in her own worth. Has she been duped? Approaching old age, she finds in the abbess a confessor, to whom she can confide her true story and perhaps, at the same time, convince herself that her life has been worthwhile. But the abbess has objectives of her own, and the two of them may not be on the same side. Edward Charles presents an enthralling evocation of fifteenth-century Florence in a novel of intrigue, wealth, deception, and high political drama. The largest and most respected financial institution in Europe in its prime, the Medici bank came to represent the might of a family of great influence and power, who scaled the very heights of human grandeur but were to suffer through one of the most catastrophic financial crashes of early banking as the survival of a dynasty hung in the balance. “A vivid tapestry of Florentine history . . . Imaginatively structured.” —Booklist (starred review)

Author : Franco Cesati
Publisher : Mandragora
Page : 150 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Art
ISBN : UOM:39015063248630

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The Medici by Franco Cesati Pdf

The Medici are probably the best-known and most illustrious Italian family - one that produced two popes, two Queens of France and such a multi-faceted and extraordinary figure as Lorenzo the Magnificent. Their name is inextricably linked to the history of Florence. The city itself remains a living symbol of the peninsula's most splendid epoch. When people around the world think of Italy, they usually think of Florence and Tuscany, and of the priceless art collections that hold, to this day, an irresistible fascination for millions of visitors. This concise and brilliant book reads like a piece of journalism in the best sense of the term. With an entirely original and non-provincial approach, the author traces the dazzling rise and fall of this dynasty, from the first gonfaloniere to the last Grand Duke, tirelessly bringing out its historical links with Florence, Italy and Europe. The many illustrations, clarified by ample captions, do not add up to a mere gallery of official portraits; rather, the

Author : J. R. Hale
Publisher : Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : History
ISBN : 1842124560

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Florence and the Medici by J. R. Hale Pdf

The enduring fascination of the Medici emanates from their ability as individuals and as a family to control the government of Florence - first, within a quasi-democratic system, and finally through dynastic inheritance.Based on the latest research, Professor Hale's masterly study thus presents an account of the Medici that serves as a history of Florence from the early fifteenth to the early eighteenth century.